Highway will bring Nepal and Tibet 'in from the cold

By Joanna Jolly 
BBC News

The Himalayan mountains on the Nepal-China border are some of the most remote and inaccessible in the world.

But deep in the valleys next to the green, flowing waters of the Kyirong River, Chinese construction workers are blasting through the jagged landscape to turn an ancient trading track into a modern road.

This small stretch of road - just 17km (10.5 miles) long - from the border to the Nepalese town of Syabrubesi is costing the Beijing government almost $20m.

But it's an important investment because this mountain pass not only connects Tibet to Nepal - it's also the most direct land route to India's capital, Delhi.

Huge difference

"There is an old Chinese saying, 'To get rich, build roads first'," says the Chinese team's engineer Zhang Peng.

"When this road is ready, living standards and the economy around here will improve," he says.

"Nepalese people will be able to visit Lhasa, in Tibet, and other parts of China, and Chinese tourists and businessmen will come here."

The road will make a huge difference to communities on both sides of the border.

Traders still walk the old path that runs alongside the new road - an ancient thoroughfare across the roof of the world that connects Nepal to the historic Silk route.

Thirty-five-year old Mingma Dorje Ghale has walked this small, rocky path since he was a child.

He and his friend have just trekked back from Tibet, a day's walk away, carrying bottles of Chinese brandy on their backs.

They plan to sell their goods in Nepal's border towns.

"When this road is built, I won't have to carry this heavy backpack up and down," he says.

His friend's five-year-old daughter leads their yak.

'Easier'

Until now, yaks and mules have been the only way to transport heavy goods across the border and children often take the job of leading them.

Mingma Dorje Ghale hopes that the new road will mean he can drive in and out of China and that his children will be spared the journey, so they can stay at home and attend school.

"Life for the next generation will be easier," he says.

Squeezed between the growing economies of China and India, the Nepalese government welcomes this sort of infrastructure project that it hopes will bring wealth to an impoverished nation.

The government is keen to maintain a good relationship with its giant neighbour to the north.

Nepal is home to a sizeable Tibetan community, many descended from refugees who've been fleeing Chinese rule since Beijing occupied Tibet 60 years ago.

China is worried that opening up the border could enflame an already unstable Tibetan plateau.

Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal says he has reassured Beijing that his government will not allow Tibetan dissidents to operate in his country.

"China has only one concern, that is the concern of Tibet," he says.

"That is why our policy towards China has been consistent. We believe in the One China policy, Tibet is an integral part of China and the soil of Nepal will not be allowed to be used against Tibet and China."

For those living in the remote border region, this policy is not a problem.

Phurpu Tsering Tamang, a local turned trekking guide who is himself part-Tibetan, says for the local community gaining access to Chinese wealth is more important than politics.

"After Chinese occupied Tibet, some people told us the Chinese are very rude and very tricky," he says.

"But what I see when I visit Tibet is that they are building roads everywhere and they're building houses for the people, so they have an easier life."

Nepal will need to continue to reassure China even after this road is finished next year.

It's hoping to attract more Chinese investment - and eventually create a trans-Asian highway that will cut through the Himalayas, linking China to India and opening up this secluded country.

Clock Ticks for Nepal to Settle Its Future

By JIM YARDLEY
New York Times


KATMANDU, Nepal — For anyone living in a country where reforming health care is regarded as an insurmountable challenge, consider the political calendar in the struggling Himalayan republic ofNepal. By May 28, or roughly four months off, the entire country must be reorganized.


First, a new constitution has to be drafted to reaffirm fundamental rights for Nepalese citizens, restructure the national government and create states in a country where none previously existed. The positions of president and prime minister (the king has been deposed) must be clarified: Should the country have a directly elected, powerful executive? Or should a parliamentary system prevail?


Then there is the army. Or armies. Two of them. One is the Nepalese Army. The other is the People’s Liberation Army controlled by the country’s Maoists. For a decade, the two sides fought a savage guerrilla war. Now the peace plan stemming from a 2006 accord calls for blending them together, except no one can agree how to do it, so both armies remain intact, resistant to civilian oversight and increasingly testy.

There is so much to do — the docket includes establishing affirmative action policies, redistributing land and recognizing several new official languages — that few people consider the May 28 deadline realistic. For months, the process has been deadlocked by lingering bitterness between the Maoists, now a political party, and other parties. Yet missing the deadline could push Nepal into the unknown: the interim Constitution expires on May 28 and no one is certain what will happen on May 29 if a new constitution has not been approved.

“The public has put its faith in this new constitution,” said  Kanak Mani Dixit, an influential journalist who has ties to Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. “If the constitution is not written on time, it is possible people will lose heart. The Nepali public hasn’t had experience in democracy, but they understand it and they have been fighting for it.”

The fragility of the situation and the potential for deepening political instability have ramifications for the rest of Asia as well. Nepal is a strategic buffer between China and India, and it controls the headwaters of rivers providing water for hundreds of millions of people in the region.

India’s military chief and minister of external affairs have paid visits in the past two weeks, as has  Patrick Moon, the American diplomat responsible for South Asia. TheUnited Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, recently warned that the peace process could collapse.

“The brinkmanship and confrontation between the Maoists and the government, accompanied by a sharp and dangerous hardening of positions, is making a negotiated solution significantly more difficult,” Mr. Ban warned in the most recent  quarterly United Nations update on Nepal. “The country is now entering a crucial period.”

Nepal’s hurried timetable is actually the final stage of one of the world’s most wrenching political evolutions. In five short years, Nepal has discarded a feudal monarchy, converted from a Hindu kingdom in a secular state, created a new Constituent Assembly and declared itself a democratic republic.

The political potency of the Maoists was demonstrated in 2008, when they unexpectedly won a plurality in the first Constituent Assembly elections and took control of the government.

Nine months later, the Maoists withdrew from the government after the president overruled the Maoist prime minister’s firing of the army chief, and they spent the ensuing months trying to destabilize the coalition government that replaced them. Now, the Maoists want to replace the country’s existing parliamentary-style democracy and produce a constitution based on a directly elected, powerful executive. Rival parties say the Maoists oppose a true multiparty democracy and are trying to insert elements of a Communist system into the Constitution.

In Katmandu, the capital, the deadlock has loosened slightly in recent days. After calling a three-day strike in December that paralyzed the country, Maoist leaders canceled plans for a new, indefinite strike that could have shut down the constitutional debate. Meanwhile, a committee comprising leaders of the three dominant political parties, including the Maoists, has been convened to try to broker a deal.

The immediate pressure point is the effort to integrate the two armies. Under the November 2006 peace agreement that ended the guerrilla war, the Maoists agreed to place their weapons under United Nations monitoring and temporarily station their soldiers in different quarters while politicians negotiated the details of integration. More than three years later, however, the roughly 19,000 soldiers in the Maoist army remain inside the cantonments, still training, after efforts by the United Nations to expedite integration stalled during 2009.

January brought the first small sign of progress. The Maoists  agreed to release from the cantonments about 4,000 former combatants who had been deemed ineligible for integration into the Nepalese Army, including many who fought for the Maoists as minors.

“It was all supposed to be solved within six months,” said  Kul Chandra Gautam, a former top United Nations diplomat now retired to Nepal. “Now it has been three years. Finally, something concrete is happening.”

Minendra Rijal, a member of the special committee negotiating the fate of the two armies, accused the Maoists of stalling military integration to heighten their influence in the constitutional negotiations. He said the Maoists wanted to place the courts under control of the legislature and write language into the constitution that would ban certain types of political parties.

 “Maoists have deliberately delayed the process so they can keep their army and use it for leverage,” said Mr. Rijal, a member of the Nepali Congress Party. “They want to have a guarantee that the constitution will have certain elements written into it. We want to make sure that when the constitution is promulgated that a political party will not have an army of its own.”

But Janardan Sharma, a top Maoist leader, said that the Maoists represented the interests of Nepal’s marginalized people and that the ruling elites were trying to engineer a constitution that protected their interests. He blamed the Nepalese Army for resisting integration and said the coalition government had failed to adequately compensate Maoist soldiers. He also disputed accusations that the Maoists were trying to create a constitution that would allow them to “capture” the state.

“We are committed to peace,” he said. “We are trying to create a new system. But the people who were in power in the past do not want it. We want to empower the people.”

For now, the clock is ticking. Nepali pundits and politicians are already debating what will happen if the May 28 deadline is missed. Some say the Constituent Assembly can simply amend and extend the interim Constitution. Others argue that doing so would overstep the assembly’s authority and that power would consolidate in the office of the president, a ceremonial post.

“Nepalis are known to do things at the last moment,” said Mr. Dixit, the editor. “The hope is that it will come together in the end.”

UN envoy to Nepal: resolve outstanding issues to advance peace

Nepal has such potential as a destination that it is pity that the country’s instability has gotten in the way of its travel and tourism industry from succeeding.

Cognizant of the importance of establishing peace and order in Nepal is a top United Nations envoy, which has encouraged Nepalese parties to work productively to advance the country’s fragile peace process and create the conditions to permit the world body to wind up its work there.

The appeal comes one day after the security council, supporting the government’s request, extended the mandate of the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) until May 15.

“During the remaining mandate period, the government and parties are expected to focus on creating the conditions under which UNMIN’s functions are no longer needed,” the secretary-general’s special representative, Karin Landgren, told a news conference in the capital, Kathmandu.

“We will work with the parties and the government to discuss and put together the arrangements for the withdrawal of UNMIN. Until then, UNMIN will continue its activities in support of the peace process,” said Ms. Landgren, who heads the mission, set up at the request of the Government in 2007 to support the peace process which ended a 10-year civil war between the government and Maoists.

UNMIN is also tasked with monitoring the management of arms and armed personnel of the former Royal Nepal Army and the Maoists.

In her briefing to the council last week, Ms. Landgren underlined that the peace process remains fragile, but the renewed urgency shown by the political leaders to address central peace process issues and the recent actions by the government and the parties can herald “a freshly constructive stage” for Nepal’s democratic transition.

She noted that the council welcomed the understanding between the Government and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) on having a time-bound action plan for integration and rehabilitation of Maoist army personnel, and called on them to work together to ensure its completion and implementation.

“These are the arrangements which, when agreed, will truly advance the peace process and will allow UNMIN’s activities to be completed,” said the special representative.

Ms. Landgren also cited as a positive development the action plan agreed by the government, the UCPN-M and the UN on the discharge of those Maoist army personnel disqualified in 2007 for having been minors at the time of the ceasefire agreement.

Nevertheless, she added, it is acknowledged that the peace process needs consensus-building and confidence-building, and the hope is that the recently established high-level political mechanism can strengthen important aspects of the process.

Former Nepal army head denies responsibility for chaos

By Joanna Jolly 

BBC News, Kathmandu

Nepal's retired army chief, who refused to admit former Maoist rebels into the army, has said he is not responsible for the instability that followed.

Gen Rookmangud Katawal told the BBC that despite major differences between the army and the Maoists, he believed the peace process was still on track.

The former Maoist Prime Minister, Prachanda, unsuccessfully attempted to remove Gen Katawal over the issue.

Prachanda later resigned leading to the collapse of the Maoist government.

Fighters' fate

"I don't think I'm responsible for all that that's happened. I don't want to come into any political controversy, as a man in uniform and even after I retire," Gen Katawal said.

The integration of Maoist fighters into Nepal's army has become the main sticking point of the peace agreement, which is looking increasingly fragile.

It was the general's insistence that the army would not admit a large group of Maoist fighters - a key understanding of the 2006 peace accord - that sparked the row that led to the fall of the Maoist government in May last year.

But Gen Katawal remained firm that the army would not accept a large number of former Maoists into its ranks.

"I don't think it would be a good idea and I don't think it would do anything good to the institution or to the country to accept them in groups.

"Probably the national army may lose its national characteristic - neutral characteristic, apolitical nature of the army," he said.

Confidence in peace

Despite having retired last year, Gen Katawal is still very much a political player in Nepal.

As the ex-army chief of staff, he maintains close ties with his former employer.

However, the general also said that it was important that the peace process in Nepal should not fail.

"If everybody gets together, and is honest, and everybody is sincere enough and they all commit to the issue of non-violence, fundamental human rights and the democratic political system, I don't think the peace process will be out of the league," he said.

More than 13,000 people died during the country's 10-year civil conflict between Maoist rebels and the state.

Gen Katawal said it was important not to return to violence.

He also spoke out on the issue of justice for human rights violations committed during the conflict. A number of soldiers have been accused of crimes such as murder and rape, but so far the army has prevented its members from being brought to trial.

Gen Katawal said the army was sincere about human rights and was not above the law, but that all allegations had to be proved first.

The Maoists ended their decade-long armed struggle in Nepal three years ago when they decided to enter the peace process.

They won general elections in 2008.